Premiums for 2014 individual plans sold by eHealth, the nation’s largest private insurance exchange, have spiked by more than a third since coverage requirements under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act took effect. For family plans, the increase is more than 50%, the Mountain View, Calif., company reports. The average monthly premium for individual coverage purchased through the company’s website was $274. That was up from an average monthly premium of $197 for individual plans that did not have to adhere to new coverage requirements under the ACA. For family coverage, the average monthly premium for 2014 plans sold through eHealth was $663 a month, compared to $426 for non-ACA compliant plans. (Modern Healthcare)

Comments (12)

I’m not an economist or insurance expert, but I don’t know how the administration and its advisors could believe insurance rates would go down with all of these regulations. In fact, any time regulations are applied, you can gaurantee costs are going to go up.

I agree with you, it is foolish to think that having additional regulations will decrease price. If we have to spend money to enforce the new law, the premiums will increase by at least enough to cover those costs. Regulation harms the economy, affecting buyers and sellers. Both sides will suffer from this market failure, thus for this law to be positive, it must bring lots of benefits. Sadly, the benefits are few, leaving us with a messed up market and no substantial change.

Soaring premiums is just one of the several issues that Obamacare will bring to the nation. Lower quality in treatment and attention, longer waiting times for an appointment with a physician or in the ER, and only few benefited while the rest are worse off are other consequences that Obamacare will bring.

If prices are going up, how can we expect more people to enroll? It just doesn’t make sense. If I was previously uninsured, why would I buy insurance if it is more expensive to do it? This demonstrates that Obama’s administration passed a bill without the due diligence of researching its consequences.

To make things even worse, the president knows the program is doomed to fail. That is why he is improvising reforms to the mandates. Hoping that by doing so, the program failure occurs under the next president and he will be able to blame his successor for the failure.

The comic thing about these improvised measures is that they go against the mandates that were established under Obamacare to “assure” the success of this law. And now the president is willing to amend them because they are not essential. If they were not essential in the first place, why were they included in the law? Excessive bureaucracy will doom Obamacare.

Prices are increasing and there is uncertainty of how this law will end up looking like. People have no idea what to expect. If there is such ambiguity with the law, how can we expect to enroll people? If the outcomes are unknown, what incentives do the people have to get coverage?

The increase of premiums by roughly $250 dollars a month per family will surely dent their financials. One cannot expect that such a hit will not affect the economy. That is $250 dollars less in disposable income, that would be spent on thing that moved the economy more than what insurance moves it.